What’s The Right Side In A Debate?

In the Associated Press report on the Harris-Walz campaign accepting the proposed terms for the September debate between Kamala Harris and Mine Furor, most of the interest appears to be focused on the fact that the opposing microphone will be muted when a candidate is speaking, whereas my own interest was drawn to a completely different matter.

After a virtual coin flip held Tuesday and won by Trump, the GOP nominee opted to offer the final closing statement, while Harris chose the podium on the right side of viewers’ screens.

Why would a candidate prefer the screen-right podium?

My first instinct was to imagine that for most Western viewers who read from left to right, perhaps we also tend to scan any visual frame from left to right. Searching for this idea tends to lead less to evidence for it than to people saying they’ve never seen any evidence for it, although I did find one Stack Exchange discussion that cites a German book on graphic design, which passage translates as:

This directional tendency has an impact on image design. Image elements or contrasts that should be given particular importance should be positioned in the right image field. The viewer’s gaze will come to rest there after the image has been scanned from top left to bottom right.

The question was raised by Josh Fiallo for The Daily Beast regarding last June’s debate with Joe Biden, and it offers just that explanation but also suggests, citing Brooke Mondor for Looper, that royal stagecraft often puts the more powerful figures on the right side. (Apparently this is why talk show hosts always sit on the right? Who knows.)

At any rate, my fairly cursory attempt to find supporting evidence for one’s attention, at least in Western viewing/reading circles, landing on the right side of a frame of whatever kind didn’t yield anything definitive. It’s the sort of thing that I think most people think seems correct.

My own head canon here is that the Harris-Walz campaign, at least, believes this and wants to exploit it for a very specific reason: since Harris’ microphone will be muted when Mine Furor is speaking, her only in-the-moment weapon is her reaction to him when it’s his turn. If people naturally land on the right side of a frame, in any two-shot I’m thinking the campaign believes audiences will see those reactions loud and clear.